I get his 30 seconds.
Welcome, Minister. It's always a pleasure to have you at our committee.
First, I would just comment on the Canada summer jobs, because we all seem to be talking about it. I love the program. Since I've been elected we've more than doubled the number of Canada summer jobs we've had in the riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge. Part of the reason for that is that I've gone out and met with almost every single student. We showcase them on social media with videos, pictures, and we interview them—not only the students, but also the organizations that hire them to find out what they hire them for and what criteria they are looking for.
I was really excited to see that over the course of the last three years, we've tried to push people to hire on what the students are doing in school. For example, we have a hatchery, and they've hired people from university who are studying fish and biology. This is practical experience for them, which is great. So thank you for that program.
I'm going to move to a different subject. Right now we're studying construction jobs and the lack of skilled labour and so on in the GTA. I see that in the supplementary estimates (B) there is $409 million for the Canada summer job grants for qualifying full-time and part-time students. I know you haven't likely been following our study, but the problem we're seeing is that people are moving away from skilled trades. Could this money be applied to trying to encourage skilled workers to pick up the trades? Is there an opportunity here to use this program?